In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.

Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.

I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother–her incomparable mother!–five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in Europe and now I have lost Jean. How poor I am,...

In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at...

It’s lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they...

Now, then, that is the tale. Some of it is true.

He done his level best.Was he a mining on the flat..He done it with a zest..Was he a leading of the choir..He done his level best.If he’d a reg’lar task to do,He never took no...

Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable.

Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.

I had to have company — I was made for it, I think — so I made friends with the animals. They are just charming, and they have the kindest disposition and the politest ways;...

Did you think you had educated the superstition out of those people?”I certainly did think it.”Well, then, you may unthink it.

After a long time and many questions, Satan said, “The spider kills the fly, and eats it; the bird kills the spider and eats it; the wildcat kills the goose; the — well, they all...

We had a little slave boy whom we had hired from some one, there in Hannibal. He was from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and had been brought away from his family and his friends,...

After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.

Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.

Herodotus says, “Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will correct these defects.

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

I don’t like to commit myself about Heaven and Hell, you see, I have friends in both places.

Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.

Comparison is the death of joy.

The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and...

The government is merely a servant―merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn’t. Its function is...

The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d druther not.

NOTICEPersons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.BY ORDER...

Never argue with stupid people; they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.

There isn’t a parallel of latitude but thinks it would have been the equator if it had had its rights.

Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs one step at a time.

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.

Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

Be wise as a serpent and wary as a dove!

The dream vocabulary shaves meanings finer and closer than do the world’s daytime dictionaries.

Look at the tyranny of party– at what is called party allegiance, party loyalty– a snare invented by designing men for selfish purposes– and which turns voters into chattels, slaves, rabbits; and all the while,...

Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.

Supposing is good, but finding out is better.

Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Of all the creatures ever made (man) is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he...

Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.

While the rest of the species is descended from apes, redheads are descended from cats.

Who knows, he may grow up to be President someday, unless they hang him first!” Aunt Polly about Tom Sawyer

I love to hear myself talk, because I get so much instruction and moral upheaval out of it.

He would be a consul no doubt by and by, at some foreign port, of the language of which he was ignorant; though if ignorance of language were a qualification he might have been a...

I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare,...

What is Man? Man is a noisome bacillus whom Our Heavenly Father created because he was disappointed in the monkey.

The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven not man’s.

But death was sweet, death was gentle, death was kind; death healed the bruised spirit and the broken heart, and gave them rest and forgetfulness; death was man’s best friend; when man could endure life...

A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows.

That’s the difference between governments and individuals. Governments don’t care, individuals do.

It’s considered good sportsmanship not to pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.

The government of my country snubs honest simplicity but fondles artistic villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or...

When angry, count four. When very angry, swear.

What a hell of a heaven it will be when they get all these hypocrites assembled there!